British reform movement

The British reform movement was a political movement in the 19th century United Kingdom which advocated for electoral reform, against child labor, for a reform of the Poor Laws, free trade, educational reform, prison reform, public sanitation, and women's suffrage. While some were asking why the poor should suffer to underwtire Britain's booming wealth, a rising middle class was questioning the justice of the electoral system - and demanding change. The movement has its origins with Mary Wollstonecraft's 1792 Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and it achieved the eight-hour work day in 1802, the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, the extension of the electoral franchise to the middle-class in 1832, and the repeal the Corn Laws in 1846, additional electoral Reform Acts in 1867 and 1884, public education in 1870, the secret ballot in 1872, and suffrage for women above the age of 30 in 1918.

Background
The people of Britain had learned to take pride in their perceived tradition of liberty, courageously - but moderately - upheld. Tyranny was successfully resisted during the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of the 17th century. Yet the dangers of "people power" when taken to extremes were all too clear from France's Reign of Terror. Ordinary people took heart from the fact that, as the 19th century began, their voices were being heard and their opposition looked like ending a cruel slave trade.

History
The urban middle class had already shown their strength in the success of the Abolitionist movement, compassion reinforced by a steelier sense that slavery was a brake on the free market. Parliament abolished the slave trader throughout the British Empire in 1807 and the Royal Navy enforced the policy at sea. Again, idealism and economic realism went together. Britain, the inevitable winner in trials of economic strength, opposed all kinds of anti-competitive practice.

Corn Laws
Yet a certain ambivalence was evidenced by the introduction of the Corn Laws in 1815. They barred all wheat imports unless the domestic price reached a certain level. Unabashedly protectionist, the laws guaranteed the income of an aristocratic landed interest, which was represented by the Tories. The Whigs, to whose cause the class of newly wealthy industiralists had naturally gravitated, favored a free market in food so cheaper produce could be imported and wages kept down.

Wage slaves
In general, the Whigs had come to have the interests of the industrialists at heart, so it was the Tories who took the lead in trying to ease conditions for the working poor. The 1802 Factory Act stipulated a maximum eight-hour working day for children aged between 9 and 13 years, 12 hours for those aged 14-18. But the repeated outlawing of the employment of under-nines in textile mills thereafter underlined how often legislation was ignored. Besides, the law could influence only the most readily regulated industries - chiefly textiles. Other - including mines and garment-making sweatshops - were unaffected. Lord Shaftesbury, a Tory and Radical MP John Fielden fought for a new Factory Act, though they were not finally to prevail until 1847. Others were campaigning too. In 1838, Richard Cobden and john Bright launched their Anti-Corn Law League, providing a powerful focus for the Free Trade lobby.

Electoral absurdity
Social injustice was perpetuated by political inequality. Only those owning a property could vote, so a mere 200,000 out of more than 10 million adult males were eligible. Of more significance to the property-owning middle classes, however, were the glaring geographical inequities in the system. Many constituencies were "pocket boroughs", their electors voting at the behest of the local lord. Several "rotten boroughs" had only a handful of electors, but still sent members to Parliament on the landowner's say-so.

The Industrial Revolution had demographically transformed Britain. Cities such as Manchester and Leeds grew, and with them substantial, new (and predominantly Whig-supporting) electorates. A system that placed a major conurbation on a par with a quaint cathedral city (or even Oxford and Cambridge Universities, which both had their own MPs) appeared to them to be crying out for reform. Lord Grey's Whig government, elected in 1830 after King George IV's death, tried twice to bring in reform, but both times it was rebuffed - when they got legislation through the Commons, it was thrown out by the House of Lords.

The Great Reform Act
The Tories tried to block yet another attempt in 1832, but gave in to King William IV's threat to create more lords who would vote the bill through. So the Great Reform Act was duly passed. It abolished the worst rotten boroughs and extended the electoral franchise - though not as much as working-class campaigners had hoped. Parliament was far mroe cleanly elected by a much larger electorate, but a property qualification remained, so only about one in six men (and no women at all) could vote.

British politics looked different, even so. Having long since won the fight for parliamentary power under a constitutional monarchy, the Whigs were moving on to battle for free trade and for limits to government intervention in the economy; increasingly they called themselves "Liberals". The Tories too were changing. Robert Peel's Tamworth Manifesto (1834) laid the foundations for the modern Conservative Party. Endorsing the Great Reform Act, Peel promised to support change where truly needed.

As good as his word, in 1846 he sacrificed his second term as Prime Minister to repeal the Corn Laws. And it was to be a Conservative prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, who introduced a Second Reform Act in 1867; the Liberal William Ewart Gladstone brought in the Third Reform Act in 1884.

Aftermath
It was in the 1840s that philosopher Karl Marx made "bourgeoisie" the dirt word it has remained for writers and thinkers on the left. Whether by accident or design, the electoral reforms of the 1830s drove a wedge between the middle class and the working class. Professional men, who had been excluded, now had their place in Parliamentary democracy, but working-class men (and all women) were still out in the electoral cold. Even so, many in the middle class strove to improve social conditions. Among the workers, however, the conviction was growing that if they wanted change they were going to have to fight for it themselves.